Week 644 AZ - Amelia's rough camping luck.

Amelia - Dad, I’m always having such bad luck, every time something terrible happens …. We’ve been doing lots of camping this year, which has been fun, but Amelia’s right she has had some bad luck. Thankfully she’s super resilient, and gets back up on the horse.

• Dad - stop helping, I need to learn to do this otherwise what am I gonna do when I grow up
• Kayaking whuile camping
• Having the kids help to setup and tear down
• Bikign at the camp sites

Note to future Igor, I have audio Amelia telling these stories in Notablily on August 22 2022)

Vault Toilets

“Tori, can you check on Amelia, she went to the bathroom a long time ago”, “She’s fine you always tell me to stop worrying” … 5 minutes later … “It’s been a really long time, please go”… “Sigh, fine”

Aside, I don’t think of myself as fancy, but my ass does enjoy flush toilets. Normally we only camp places with flush toilets, but this campsite that was close to Seattle so we made an exception … Now back to our story …

Fifteen minutes earlier, Amelia went to the bathroom, which was a dark, only a little bit stinky vault toilet. While some vault toilets are new, this one was pretty old and the door was sticky. Needing privacy, Amelia had to pull on the door really hard to get it to close properly. Amelia notes it was dark, but luckily her eyes adjusted so she could see.

Remember that sticky door? Well that became a problem 2 minutes earlier when Amelia tried to leave the bathroom, but the door would not open. Try as she might, at 8 years old there’s only so hard Amelia could push, and it wasn’t enough to get the door open.

After pushing and pushing unsuccessfully, Amelia tried screaming for help, but no one came, so she kept screaming. After 5 minutes Amelia figured no one was going to come, and she better save her voice until she heard someone coming by.

Amelia realized she was stuck, and started going crazy and crying. Even though only 8, Amelia is fierce and use to hard situations. With tears in her dark adjusted eyes she looked for what she could do to escape. She saw a vent grate and realized it was small, but so was she, and if she could only get the vent off she could be free. She started to pull on the grates, 1 bar 2 bars, 3 bars. She was very excited, but then as she got the next vent out she didn’t see sunshine, she saw wood, the vent didn’t go outside it just went to a chimney.

Luckily at this point, Amelia heard Mom’s voice “Amelia …, Amelia …”, and thankfully Amelia had saved her voice so screamed out “Mom!”, Tori came and rescued her.

As a testament to Amelia’s braveness, even though she was crying all the way back to the campsite, and then in the tent for a while, she still goes into vault toilets, but now she know she just needs to really push her shoulder into the door.

River Current

Another weekend we went camping, this time with flush toilets, and there was a shallow river we were told we could swim in. When we got to the river, we found the river was super shallow so Amelia could walk in to her waist. She was disappointed because she’d brought her donut floatie, but the water was so shallow it didn’t do anything.

The river was about 50 feet across, and while one half was super shallow the water had some current, and the other half was a bit deeper, but then it got shallow again down river.

“Hey you know what would be fun” I said “grab your floatie, and we’ll go up river a bit”. We walked 50 feet up river, and Amelia walked in with her floatie, it was a bit tricky holding her floatie, getting into it, and then getting into the deeper water but she did it.

She started floating at a liesurely pace, but then she got pushed closer to shore and got snagged in a tree. She grabbed the tree calmly, but then water got in her eyes. Amelia really doesn’t like water in her eyes, and she wasn’t wearing her goggles so she started screaming “I’ve got water in my eyes”, and started crying and yelling. Unknown to me, that current was also bashing Amelia into the tree, and it was bruising her up pretty badly.

As Amelia screamed that she had water in her eyes in the background, I wasn’t too worried. The river was shallow, so I leisurely stripped down to my underwear and waded across the river. Half way across (maybe at 15 feet) it was deep enough I could start swimming so I dove in. A few strokes in, that water got much deeper, and it was moving much faster then I expected.

I’m a reasonably strong swimmer so I got across just behind the tree (Foolishly I went straight across instead of ahead of her). I was fighting the current to get to the tree, but I couldn’t quit push ahead of the current. Even though Amelia was screaming, try as I might, I could not get close enough to grab Amelia. Fighting to hold my position behind her, and beginning to panic myself, I said “Amelia you need to let go of tree”, she wasn’t too excited about that as her eyes were shut so she wouldn’t get water in them, but I kept my voice steady over my rising panic and repeated, “I’ve got you, just let go”.

She let go a few seconds later and the river pushed her into me. As you’d except she grabbed on to me for dear life which was tricky as recall I was fighting the current. Luckily she’s swam on my back quite a few times and we were able to get back to the other shore.

On shore I could see how bruised up she was as I was calming down my adrenaline.

Have a great day and remember: When life knocks you down, get back up and don’t frown - ZiaT